While many Limerick City-centre businesses (and obviously the Chamber of Commerce by association) are unhappy about the overruling of their planning permission objection to the multi-million injection into our city, we are not of the same opinion.

An alternative to blocking Limerick’s forward trajectory, would be for city-centre businesses to take a more holistic view of the bigger picture, in terms of their business strategy.

For example, being located in the city-centre does not ‘entitle’ any business to get more trade/footfall, by default. It takes more than an attitude of ‘we’re in the city centre so you shop here’ to entice customers to buy their products and services.

The businesses need to incentivise people to come into the city centre for reasons other than their location (or indeed any other external factors) to enhance their business. The reason people should come to your place of business should be because you are offering something better than the others.

A better product. A better service. Something to make a customer choose you, because you are better, because you are worthy of receiving our money in return for your goods; not because you are ‘near’.

Aspire to make your business better than the rest. Then customers will come to your whether you’re in the city-centre… or not.

The #LimerickCityOfCulture project and its tempestuous relationship with its citizens seems to have calmed, if only until the jetstream of public opinion regenerates its energy. In the wake of recent controversy regarding the roll-out of the project, the eerie silence from the Project Team (in terms of communicating out the current project status) is just a small bit worrying don’t you think?

Has the Project Team learnt anything at all during the last few weeks? You see, apart from a brief upload to the Vimeo website yesterday where Mr. Fitzpatrick tells us to ‘keep up-to-date’, we really have seen very little about The Plan. Yes, we’ve seen some “what’s-on-this-week” type information but what about The Plan?

Limerick 2030 would like answers to three simple questions:

Will you publish our Limerick City of Culture Project Charter?

Will you publish our Cost/Benefit analysis document?

Will you publish our Project Schedule and our Roles and Responsibilities matrix?

Without these fundamental documents, we fear that the governance for the project is flawed. If the governance is flawed, then we have little hope of the project being delivered successfully. Of course, the word ‘successfully’ is in itself is a fuzzy term, given that we are not aware of what the criteria for success are. This leads us to another topic in a similar vein. What are the success criteria for this project?

Without knowing what to measure, record and track in terms of the Project outcomes, how do we say whether the project is a success or not? Well we hate to say it but,

It’s just not possible!

But wait, maybe the media and quasi-informed-political-opinions could be the determining factor when it comes to measuring this Project’s success. Do we really want our City of Culture year to be measured by opinion, or would we prefer it to be measured by fact? In summary, we believe that we need to ask more from the Project Team behind this initiative, so that we can be reassured that they are going about the project delivery and measurement, in a professional manner. Indeed we hope and pray that the Limerick 2030 project does not see the issues that this project has had to-date.

Will you join us in our quest for the 3 documents above? Spread the word ár gcairde.

I would like to offer my expertise and experience to the Limerick City of Culture Board as interim Artistic Director on a voluntary / Pro Bono basis until the newly configured Board of Directors appoint a suitable Artistic Director through due diligence. This is being offered to get the programme back on track and to reassure the artistic community continuity as a matter of urgency.

If the Limerick City of Culture Board accept my offer the first thing I will do is organise a massive all inclusive Limerick Creative SHOWCASE for late January to take place in the City centre, inclusive of all the artistic disciplines within the city, to reclaim the rightful honour that is National City of Culture 2014.

The Second thing I will do will be to invite previous City of Culture programmers Maeve McGrath and Joe Mangan to re-join the team for the sake of clarity and continuity in the programming.

The third thing I will do is to commit fully to get on with the job at hand, which is to consolidate and confirm the immediate programme of events and build trust in the community around ‘city of culture’.

I am confident that I have the full support of all the Local Arts Practitioners, professional and voluntary and the citizens of Limerick to do the job to the best of my ability with their assistance and commitment.

This would only be an interim solution giving the newly configured Board the necessary time and space to appoint a suitable replacement Artistic Director in due course.

Richie Ryan.

You can leave a comment below in the big white box, at your leisure.
Is mise le meas,
#Limerick2030

The Circle phenomenon has hit Ireland. Limerick to be precise. It has dodged the bouncers and gatecrashed our lovely Limerick social media party. Want to know what it’s all about? Yes, we thought so. Don’t know about you, but it seems that everybody is inviting people and it’s sooo annoying.

So in short then, the Circle app is yet another flavour of communication ‘commware’ that is about to hit us from one of the many Internet giants– this time it’s Hawthorne labs. They, in association the people who brought you LikeALittle, are being funded by some large investors (one of which is the actor turned serial-tweeter, Ashton Cutcher). But for a change, they are not pushing another app down our throats. Rather, this app osmotes directly into your brain, all by itself. The secretive nature of Circle’s marketing strategy combined with the lack of instructions on how to use it, is well, cool.

So that’s the backdrop. But what does it do? Well, it’s like Facebook and Twitter had a baby. And that baby had style and was named “Circle”. For example, you’ve heard about Google Glass, right. If you have a Circle account and you are using Google Glass… hey, pictures speak louder than words. There’s a video below and it outlines what will be possible when those two get together.

We would like to issue our own health warning though, from we who like to see all things tech on the horizon. Bi cúramach. The Circle doesn’t care too much about who’s allowed see you; nor does it care who you can see. Also, sharing links on Circle is not easy, it likes to replace your links with it’s own links back to Circle. Yes, it’s crafty. Our verdict?

Circle is what Facebook would be like, if Steve Jobs invented it.

We strongly advise you to get your Circle account, before somebody else takes your name.